Cancer
In Chapter 2, Healthcare Foundations, we cited several reasons why fighting cancer via ML is an important endeavor, its significant global morbidity, mortality, and emotional consequences notwithstanding. In this section, let's take a closer look at some important concepts and background about cancer, potential machine learning applications for fighting cancer, important features for cancer risk and survivability modeling, and some of the work that has already been done in the area of breast cancer as an example.
What is cancer?
Cancer can be described as the growth and proliferation of abnormal cells. These cells differ from normal cells in their aggressive reproductive capabilities and their ability to starve normal cells from important resources such as blood and nutrients. Cancer is usually either benign, meaning that it is self-contained to a local area of the body, or malignant, meaning that it has the ability to spread to other bodily tissues. Malignant cancers almost always...
